Worm sends Twitter in a tizzy!

Twitter is not all that safe after all! A worm developed by a Norwegian hacker exposed the security vulnerabilities of Twitter as it bombarded users with pop-ups and links to various porn sites.

Twitter is not all that safe after all! A worm developed by a Norwegian hacker exposed the security vulnerabilities of Twitter as it bombarded users with pop-ups and links to various porn sites.



Interestingly, the hacker announced his achievement with a tweet but also clarified that he was only highlighting a flaw in the system.



"I simply wanted to exploit the hole without doing any 'real' harm," he told BBC News.



Incidentally other hackers piggy-backed on his idea and created disruptive programmes which linked users to various pornographic sites. "It was only a matter of time before more serious worms started," he said.

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Twitter

The disruptive worm's first victim was wife of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Sarah Brown. Apparently, her 1.1 million followers were sent a link to a Japanese pornographic site.



Sarah, later in the day, tweeted: "Don't touch the earlier tweet - this twitter feed has something very odd going on!"

The flaw only worked on Twitter's older site, rather than the new version.

Twitter has more than 160 million users worldwide.